Archive for SHaMs

Not Half Bad

The Mets reached the All-Star Break still leading the East and having endured dreadful starts by some guys (uh, Lindor) and injuries to many others but only hit the magic 10-games-over-.500 mark once, and retreated from that pretty rapidly, and still with questions as to who’s going to pitch twice a week, which reliever is going to be most reliable, and who’s going to be traded where and for whom as they address the challenge of improving.

Because as good as things broke for the First-Half Mets, the SHaMs will have to be considerably better.

There’s been signs of life from Lindor in recent weeks and reuniting the lineup with Nimmo and Conforto (will someone remind him there’s a massive contract to still play for?) are encouraging trends. That said we’re also too frequently running out palookas like Robert Stock (the club’s first-ever No. 89) and waiver-wire roster-riders like Geoff Hartlieb (assigned Jacob Barnes’ since-surrendered 40) and Nick Tropeano (52) who won’t likely be positives for a pennant-winner over the long haul, so I’m expecting something of a massive trade or two in the days and weeks ahead.

There are 75 games to go. The Mets realistically need to shoot for winning 45 of them. Go SHaMs!

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Opting Out of Reality

I haven’t completely “opted out” this year, but between the weird games, the dumb rules, the danger, the fake crowd noise, the home games away, and so on, there’s a fraudulence embedded into this season that at some level, I’ve been reluctant to want to legitimize.

Take Juan Lagares as one example. As we know, the erstwhile Met, until not long ago the most tenured figure on the club, was issued the humiliating No. 87 and appeared as a pinch runner. His 12? That belongs to Eduardo Nunez, whom I’ve forgotten was/is a Met, just another disabled one for the moment. They tried to right this injustice a day later by issuing Lagares the freed-up 15 most recently belonging to released Brian Dozier and his .133 batting average, only to release Lagares once Andres Gimenez and Michael Wacha and David Peterson and Jake Marisnick returned.

Guys are coming and going every day: third- and fourth-string catchers like Ali Sanchez and Patrick Mazeika, resplendent in Nos. 70 and 76– along with 87, a first-ever issue for an active Met. Walker Lockett up and back. Drew Smith. Corey Oswalt. It’s all a big free-for-all. Joining soon, maybe today, perhaps tomorrow, is the Cuban outfielder Guillermo Heredia, picked up from Pittsburgh. The Mets list his assignment (temporarily, I hope) as 00. Heredia bats right and throws left, a perfect sort of oddball for this whacky year.

Above all, it’s hard to tell what the heck is going on with the team in general. The lineup can hit but can’t score, the bullpen is full of good arms that are unreliable and nobody knows who’s starting. Gsellman and Lugo both are in the rotation. Matz is in the bullpen, or something like it. McNeil’s head is up his ass. Alonso looks horrible except when he doesn’t. Dom Smith is an MVP candidate. Opponents you expect to be formidable, like the Red Sox and Yankees and Nationals, aren’t, and it’s still a monumental struggle. The Marlins outhustle you. You’re just a couple game out of first and would make the playoffs if they began today but have played most of the year like shit.

The new manager loses almost all his video-replay challenges, his coaches are working remotely and on the disabled list, the general manager gets caught ripping the commissioner when he meant to rip the owners; they get back at him by issuing statements misspelling his name while blessedly prepping again to sell the club, probably for a hundreds of millions less than they agreed to a eight months ago.

Let’s Go Mets! Thanks for your support!

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Better Jed Than Dead

Sorry for the dearth of updates! Was traveling for 2 weeks and lucky to have missed the Atlanta and Chicago series–not to mention the awful Player’s Weekend uniforms.

This Mets team is really driving you nuts, isn’t it? There’s a disease in the bullpen, the team itself is prone to sudden periodic shutdowns, so they are never safe from embarrassing themselves but at the same time the 2019 Mets are as accomplished as any group they’ve run out there for years. I suppose this is an indictment of their manager but it’s more than just that. And with Cano and Nimmo back … and now Jed Lowrie even (!!) they’re arguably better now than they’ve ever been, so I’m not ready to give up, even though I have twice already: Once back on July 24 after they’d slept-walked though a home loss to San Diego, falling to 46-55; and again the other night when Mickey, Sewald & Diaz teamed up to deliver that joke of a 9th inning.

Anyway, the Mets won 14 of 15 after my first surrender and they’re undefeated since the second.

You guys know this by now but Sam Haggerty is wearing 19. Haggerty came over in the Kevin Plawecki trade from Cleveland’s minor leagues. He’s a fleet switch hitter and the first 19 since Jay Bruce. Lowrie took over No. 4 from Wilmer Flores.

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Brach … And Roll

Here we go guys. The new frontier of the no-trades-past-the-deadline era are free agents dumped onto the market for various reasons, like Donnie Hart, Asdrubal Cabrera and now, Brad Brach. We got two out of those three, and may have a fourth if reports hold true and soon-to-former-Giant Joe Panik arrives.

Brach, the former Oriole All-Star reliever released by the Cubs, will replace Hart in the Mets bullpen. He looks to be a victim of bad luck and less than ideal control but could shore up the corps ahead of this weekend’s crucial showdown with Cabrera and the Nationals. Brach’s a strapping righty out of Springsteen Country (Freehold, Monmouth) who’s worn four numbers in four big-league stops: The 29 he rocked most recently in Chicago is available here, so it’s our guess he gets it.

The Mets aren’t officially Panik-ing quite yet but with Robbie Cano out for weeks, consider Joe’s a local guy too (born in Yonkers, went to St. John’s), plays second base, bats lefthanded and is somewhat of a surer bet than Luis Guillorme (much less Cano) to perform for the rest of the year, if one can overlook the fact that he hasn’t been very good for the last two seasons and grew up a Derek Jeter fan. The 12 he’s worn for all six years of his career with the Giants belongs to Juan Lagares, but lucky for him No. 2 is available since Gavin Cecchini’s disappearance from both the Mets’ 40-man roster and their future, given his .225/.286/.314 line at AA Binghamton this year.

Let’s update all this when word’s official. Till then, LGM or as Pete Alonso might say, LFGM. For Pete’s sake.

 

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Gotta Have Hart

What can you say? The Mets have been fortunate to combine the best pitching they’ve gotten all year with a stretch of the schedule featuring one sloppy, less-fortunate club after another, and like good teams do, the Mets are making hay.

Now before we get too overconfident let’s take care of the Marlins. New arrival Donnie Hart, a lefty reliever waiver-claimed from Milwaukee, made his debut yesterday in 68, a number we most recently saw on Wilmer Font, who’s now pitching in Toronto.

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Deadline Headlines

Don’t look now but the SHaMs have won five in a row and 11 of 16 since the break and if they aren’t too careful they just might get back to .500. From there we can talk about the fringes of the second Wild Card, yet it would appear that so much of that depends on what happens in the coming hours today.

All of which makes it curious that in this silly trade deadline, where out-of-it clubs like the Mets and Reds are absorbing the prize assets, that they traded Jason Vargas to the Phillies for a 26-year-old AA catcher hitting .190. Vargas, whose struggles last season were a major reason the club performed as badly as it did in the first half and who probably isn’t vital to a first- or fifth-place finish for anyone, was at least holding his own this year, despite revealing himself to being a bit of an asshole. It would be a weird kind of self-inflicted wound were the Phillies to use Vargas to hold us off.

Joel Sherman, whose reporting this time of year I think is as good as anyone, wrote a good piece examining the Mets’ curious position. I think he’s right: The club rarely achieves sustained success because that’s not something it ever bothers to envision; rather they are constantly going for it contemporaneously. Occasionally that’s going to result in deadlines like this one where a poor-performing club trades for the best pitcher available and might (probably should) also trade the centerpiece of the previous winter’s spree, “closer” Edwin Diaz. If you stayed up late enough last night you’d have seen why they oughta and, likely how little they’ll get. in return.

But if you think the Mets will learn anything from the whole experience you can forget it.

Go SHaMs!

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Chief Brodie Strikes Again

Oh, those unpredictable Mets.

Season-appropriate Mets jersey I spied at Citifield this past week.

Amid speculation that their disappointing season warranted a dramatic teardown that could include Noah Syndergaard, Zack Wheeler and others, Brodie “Trade Tomorrow for Today” Van Wagenen instead pulled a surprise dealĀ  for one of the other hot names on the starter front, Marcus Stroman of the Blue Jays.

The deal will cost the Mets yet another two prospects–promising starters Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods-Richardson–but in Stroman returns a Long Island native who’s a pretty darn good pitcher himself and is under team control for another couple years.

Presumably, there will be another shoe to drop here: He makes one of Wheeler, Syndergaard or Jason Vargas expendable, and Brodie–or his bosses–don’t appear to care too deeply for the assets acquired by his predecessor. The deal also comes at an interesting moment for the club, which lately looks at least a little bit more like the club that we thought might contend this season, though part of that has to do with some indifferent play from their opponents and whatever it is, it’s almost assuredly too late.

I in fact confess as a fan to have mentally packed it in for them last Wednesday, when their arrogant lack of preparation and propensity for making the same mistakes over and over again doomed them a loss with three Wild Card rivals in reach, but whackier things have happened. What if they only wind up trading Vargas? They’d have a good starter on the mound just about every day.

This Stroman fellow, you may know, is noted for the unusual No. 6 he wears on his Blue Jays duds. This he related, owes to his grandmother’s birthday (March 6) and portends a showdown with current occupant Jeff McNeil. The Mets have never had a single-digited pitcher, though positional players pitching (Desi Relaford in 8 and Todd Zeile in 9, also Jose Reyes in 7) have made appearances.

Will Stroman celebrate granny’s birthday a day later and take the vacant 7? Would he and McNeil make some kind of a side deal? Will 34 and 45 and 44 and 39 and 21 suddenly become available?

This is the Mets. They’ll do anything.

Update: Stroman has indicated, however cryptically, that he would wear No. 7.

 

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Come and Get The SHaMs

Brodie Van Wagenen this afternoon did his best to deflect questions and spin the horrific job he’s done so far as GM of the Mets, who’ve wasted another half-season on overinflated expectations and underperformance on the field. He also spoke highly of the collaborative evaluation process that led to the disaster that is the current season and said he’s looking forward to the process of collaboratively evaluating processes so as to come up with a evaluative process of collaboration moving forward.

And with that, another sad season begins for the SHaMs (Second-Half-Mets).

Sounds like Zack Wheeler, Todd Frazier and Jason Vargas will soon be departing and Mickey Callaway a little later. Wilmer Font has been whacked already and Chris Mazza is back.

Good luck, SHaMs!

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Mets Score Empty Netter

Well anyone with interest knows this already — I was vacationing! — but the promotion of Eric Hanhold from AAA and his appearance the other night wearing No. 70 marked the arrival of the 55th Met of 2018, breaking a 51-year-old record of 54 Mets used in 1967.

That club, by the way, had 55 guys on the active big-league roster but one of them — a young fireballer named Nolan Ryan — didn’t make an appearance.

Do you guys follow hockey? I never really did till recently, I think a midlife crisis of some kind forced me to confront my childhood and I realized I’d been walking around with a dormant NY Islanders gene. Perhaps if the Mets were better, or if I could still pretend I cared about the NFL, I wouldn’t have noticed it.

Anyway, I was struck this morning by an article suggesting the new general manager of the Islanders just went and assigned a bunch of guys new uni numbers without their input — at least four guys, young guys but with some equity like Anthony Beauvillier (72 to 18), Adam Pelech (50 to 3), Scott Mayfield (42 to 24) and Josh Ho-Sang, whose 66 was already attracting attention, now skating in 26. All the numbers, you’ll notice, went down. And there’s no more 91 wearing the C.

While a unilateral change of that magnitude is unlikely to occur in baseball it might be an interesting move for whoever general-manages the Mets next season to execute a similar reordering, just to send a message that the kind of unprecedented revolving-door roster the Mets had in 2018 — and the results that accompanied it — could be a part of the change they seek. To the extent the Mets approach to uni numbers sends a message currently, it’s either “we don’t care that much” and/or “we lack a true identity” and/or “these guys aren’t for real.”

 

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Zamora The Same

Thaks for the image, @DaveMetsDugout

Today the Mets announced another swap of would-be relief candidates, sending the newly arrived Bobby Wahl to the disabled list and promoting lefty Daniel Zamora. Naturally they gave Zamora No. 73.

Zamora comes to the Mets from Class AA Binghamton, where he’s been having a good year. He’s a Stony Brook product we acquired over the offseason for Josh Smoker, and becomes the 4th Mets 73 ever, the first since Robert Carson. All by the way have been lefties: Kenny Rogers, Ricardo Rincon, and Carson. Should Zamora enter a game, he’ll be 54th Met this season, matching the 1967 club record.

That’s all I got.

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